Welcome to The Norfolk Broads Forum
This is THE Worlds Largest Forum devoted to the Norfolk Broads, here you can discuss issues about the Norfolk Broads. Or just somewhere to chat with others interested in the Norfolk Broads area. In 2015 forum members spent 2,048 days afloat on the Broads

Seems to be a very good marketing opportunity, something that would benefit the hundreds of businesses and the many thousands of people who rely on tourism for their livelihood.

But you would potentially damage those businesses and those peoples livelihoods by giving that opportunity to another area? Deliberately??

Can you justify that please? It appears to me you have used a sort of logic, but it has led you to a ridiculous conclusion.

Found this on Facebook from someone who makes a living from tourism and is no fan of the Broads Authority (quoted from public forum)

James Knight "A plea for sanity. We know it’s not a national park. But please please don’t go on about it. Sadly, nobody cares. What we do have is an opportunity to promote the positive aspects of the Broads on a nationally recognised platform. So please. Just forget about whether it’s really a national park, and focus on the good PR that will come to the area if we put some effort into extolling the virtues of the Broads, and the things which make it special. Thank you."

So, James Knight says nobody cares about the Broads being a National Park or not. Well clearly that's not the case is it , because the topic is hotly debated, often discussed and often opposed for very many reasons. We must therefore assume that James Kinght is cynically trying to tell people that it is not an issue, purely for his own reasons. But the Broads does not need to be a National Park to attract visitors. It has plenty of merits, all on its own, which have been bringing people to the Broads for many years. I'm sure many people, like us, choose a holiday destination for what it can offer the holidaymaker, and if that matches our needs , not simply on the basis that it is or isn't a national park.

I don't think there is an option to vote against . Simply the option to vote for it or not. I will be not be voting because the Broads is not a National Park and I've always been a bit picky about the finer details of things.

TT was suggesting a vote for an actual National Park so I can sort of see why some could see this as a vote against the Broads but again I think the point is the Broads is not a National Park. And if we are going to be really picky about this it's not actually a fair competition is it ? - several actual national parks and one that isn't!

batrabill, I hadn't bothered to vote in this competition, but, having read your comments (and those of James Knight and others who wrote in the same vein), I have now decided to cast my vote in favour of a properly and legally constituted national park.

That does NOT mean that I have voted against the Broads. It means that I do not accept the eligibility of the Broads to be in this competition at all.

As we all know by now, national parks were, and still are, created by the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. The Broads was not. For me that is the essential criterion for eligibility for the competition.

Had the competition been for all the members of the National Park family, I would have voted for the Broads. A fine distinction, but one that I (and many others) think is worth making.

If there was a competition for the largest fish in the sea, would we be allowed to vote for the Blue Whale. It lives in the sea like a fish, it swims like a fish, but it isn't a fish.

"..for the avoidance of any doubt, the broads are not legally a national park and do not come under the national park legislation, and nor will they."Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for DEFRA (Hansard 2015)